| Author |
Message |
ditesco_mori |
|
Post subject: Crowley and Familiars?
Posted: Jul 07, 2008 - 06:42 AM
|
|
Joined: Sep 26, 2007
Posts: 4
Location: Ohio
Status: Offline
|
|
Listen, cats, I don't know if this is a legit question, but I was stewing on it for some reason and had to ask:
Did Mr. Crowley ever mention familiars? using them? whether or not the idea was absurd? too Pagan? too Medieval? or not of them at all?
But then again, I suppose we could establish a working definition for 'familiars' as well, but I trust you. Anywho, I know that he and his fellows in the G.: D.: and I'm sure in the O.: T.: O.: had a kinda Hellenistic or Scientific approach to their subjects, but I would take the idea of a 'familiar' as something not even remotely scientific but shamanistic or 'primitive' or something like that - so has it ever come up?
Just wondering. Really not important. And for the lovapete don't take me to be this 14 year old Wiccan goth kid.
Jacob.
p.s. To tell you how new at this I am, I think the 93 over 93 equation just clicked for me. I get it, and I feel silly for not catching it earlier. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
adonia444 |
|
Post subject: RE: Crowley and Familiars?
Posted: Jul 07, 2008 - 07:04 AM
|
|
Joined: Aug 14, 2006
Posts: 335
Status: Offline
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Poelzig |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 08:43 AM
|
|

Joined: Apr 05, 2008
Posts: 86
Status: Offline
|
|
| Crowley had an extremely shitty record of mistreatment of animals. Really that is the strongest negative aspect of his whole personality that occasionally inclines me to throw his legacy into the trash incinerator. There is no mention that I am aware of in Crowley's writings of familiars in the common sense of the term. I believe there are passages dealing with the transformations of the astral body, but I think that is the closest it gets. Likewise the literature of the various 1st gen. Golden Dawn alumni; I recall no mention of familiars or any special relationship to animals other than mentioning them as elemental-type souls or referring to thought forms in animal shape. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
Poelzig |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 08:49 AM
|
|

Joined: Apr 05, 2008
Posts: 86
Status: Offline
|
|
My working definition of "Familiar" would be a specific animal (or animals) with whom one has an ongoing relationship of an occult nature.
Your familiar will turn up in dreams or scrying at significant junctures, or on the physical plane consistently provide comfort and occasionally significant "communication" (albeit nonverbal).
I have experienced this too many times to be dismissive of it. But then I tend to have closer emotional connections with animals than I do with humans.
I have seen animals, especially cats, respond and react significantly to occult workings. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
Walterfive |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 04:01 PM
|
|

Joined: Jun 08, 2005
Posts: 211
Location: 13th Floor Elevator, Enron Hubbard Bldg. Houston, Texxas
Status: Offline
|
|
Yes, but not in the manner you're accquainted with. In a footnote in "Outside The Circles Of Time", Kenneth Grant describes Liber LXX vel Sauros Batrachou as "a grimoire described by Crowley as 'the ceremony proper to the obtaining of a familiar spirit a mercurial nature as described in the Apocalypse of St. John the Divine from a frog or toad."
Appearantly the ritual required the crucifixion of a frog or toad, definitely *not* the way to gain favor with Hecate.... But there you have it, Crowley's discussion of the obtaining of a familiar spirit. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
gurugeorge |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 05:47 PM
|
|

Joined: Apr 13, 2004
Posts: 208
Location: London, UK
Status: Offline
|
|
Poelzig wrote: › Crowley had an extremely shitty record of mistreatment of animals.
Where do you get that from? I know he hated cats, but by his own confession he loved dogs and had several to old age throughout his life. |
_________________ "To wake up is to wake the world up" - D.E. Harding
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
Poelzig |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 07:11 PM
|
|

Joined: Apr 05, 2008
Posts: 86
Status: Offline
|
|
gurugeorge wrote: › Poelzig wrote: › Crowley had an extremely shitty record of mistreatment of animals.
Where do you get that from? I know he hated cats, but by his own confession he loved dogs and had several to old age throughout his life.
Aside from killing cats, toads, and whatever animals he was killing at Cefalu? And aside from the big game hunting?
The cat episode alone would earn him broken kneecaps in my world. |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
Walterfive |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 08:11 PM
|
|

Joined: Jun 08, 2005
Posts: 211
Location: 13th Floor Elevator, Enron Hubbard Bldg. Houston, Texxas
Status: Offline
|
|
| That's funny, broken kneecaps, in my world would get you 5-10 in the State Pen for malicious assault with premeditated greivous bodily harm, whereas animal cruelty rarely gets one more than 2 years in said Pen; if that... |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
Poelzig |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 08:37 PM
|
|

Joined: Apr 05, 2008
Posts: 86
Status: Offline
|
|
That is the difference between actual justice and "criminal justice."  |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
MichaelStaley |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 09:38 PM
|
|

Joined: Apr 21, 2004
Posts: 794
Status: Offline
|
|
| Well said, Poelzig. |
_________________ "It's all in the egg".
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
lashtal |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 09:52 PM
|
|
Site Admin

Joined: Sep 30, 2003
Posts: 2389
Location: Oxford, UK
Status: Offline
|
|
Anyone here remember when the subject of the thread in hand was "Crowley and Familiars?"
Back on topic please... There's a lengthy thread elsewhere where some members became rather exercised about issues relating to Crowley's alleged cruelty to animals. |
_________________ Paul
Owner & Editor
LAShTAL.COM
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
MichaelStaley |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 11:05 PM
|
|

Joined: Apr 21, 2004
Posts: 794
Status: Offline
|
|
| Happy to go back on topic, Paul. Pity though that you had to say "alleged", when it's documented. |
_________________ "It's all in the egg".
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
lashtal |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 09, 2008 - 11:09 PM
|
|
Site Admin

Joined: Sep 30, 2003
Posts: 2389
Location: Oxford, UK
Status: Offline
|
|
| It all goes with the "impartial" tag and a desire not to be judgmental on such value issues... |
_________________ Paul
Owner & Editor
LAShTAL.COM
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
sethur666 |
|
Post subject:
Posted: Jul 10, 2008 - 08:54 AM
|
|
Joined: Jun 25, 2007
Posts: 290
Status: Offline
|
|
| Well, I remember in one or other of Robert Anton Wilson's ouevre that Crowley, as a local resident, had been asked by the press about the Loch Ness Monster and described Nessie as "practically a household pet" but I'm not sure if this is a genuine quote or a Wilson invention. If genuine, trust To Mega Therion to have such a gigantic familiar.... |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
 |
|
|